A Passion for Panelling

Panelling is a wonderful and practical way to add character to a room and can transform a plain wall into a beautiful backdrop for your furnishings.

Some homes have the great advantage of still having their original panelling but if you haven’t inherited any with the house, there is no reason that it can’t be added. If you choose the right style of panelling for your home and get the colour and the execution right, it will look as if it has always been there.

The wonderful wooden panelling at Sawston Hall would have originally been installed to help insulate rooms from the cold stone walls. It also adds a lovely depth of colour to the rooms.

Painted panelling makes a room lighter which can be easier to live with. It also offers endless colour options so you aren’t restricted by a backdrop of wood. This lovely room is painted in Farrow and Ball French Grey and the colour has been applied to the walls, cornicing, skirting boards, door and door frame – everywhere other than floor and ceiling – which creates a calm, unified look.

This beautiful hallway in a Victorian country house was given some detail with simple panelling framing the wall areas below the picture rails, which were painted in with the colour of the walls.

Bathrooms can benefit hugely from panelling and is especially useful when incorporating a roll top bath as a simple ledge can be created on the top of the panelling for your soap dish, shampoo and cup of tea.

The style that you choose for your panelling is really important and will alter the feeling of the room. This lovely panelling from the Painted Wall Panelling Company has a distinct Arts and Crafts feel to it and creates a wonderful ledge to display accessories.

You can make a really bold statement if you choose contrasting colours above and below your panelling. Your eye is naturally drawn to where the colour changes so the height of your panelling needs to be considered carefully. If you choose a dark colour for your panelling, make sure your skirting boards are in the same colour as the panelling or you will end up with a white stripe at the base of your panels.

It is fine to panel around your windows if they fall below the height of the panelling that you choose. This delightful bathroom makes a feature out of a pretty window by painting it the same colour as the panelling. Panelling by The English Panelling Company.

Finally artwork looks great on panelling and if your pictures are larger than the panels , it can still work to hang them across the panels. These pictures work really well against the panelling as they have been centred across the panels. Panelling by The Wall Panelling Company.

All the rooms featured here have a traditional feel. However, panelling can look just as wonderful in contemporary settings – we will be bringing you a feature on this soon, watch this space!

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Five top tips to a stylish home

Cate was recently interviewed by Cambridge Magazine and she was asked for five top tips to creating great interiors. Here are some of her tricks of the trade.

Be bold with your style

Statement chairs in a contemporary home

This is advice that I give in my classes and that I always try to apply to my design work and what I mean is to know your own personal taste and be confident in it. If your interior style is say neutral, calm, quiet, shabby chic, then don’t be afraid to boldly execute this in your design work. We can sometimes get confused by thinking that there are things we must or must not do in our homes, or that there is good or bad taste in interior design, and when we deviate from our personal style, this is when blandness can set in. Trust your own taste and try to apply it to all elements of your home.

 

Accessories change everything

Flowers, lamps, books and pictures all help to personalise your space

 

Whether you are undertaking a full renovation project or simply freshening up your home, good accessorising makes a huge difference to the final result. Try to bear your own personal style in mind when selecting your finishing touches as it is easy to make a mistake when the purchase is not expensive, and make sure you think about what accessories you need before you shop. If in doubt, add your accessories slowly and see what looks good and the old saying of ‘only have what you know to be beautiful or useful’ is just as true with accessories as with other areas of the home.

 

 

Don’t forget your lighting

Concealed lighting adds glamour to this display

You can create a beautiful interior space but without good lighting, it will never shine. Plan your lighting with the uses of the space in mind – activities like working, reading, putting on make-up need task lighting whilst artwork, favourite spaces and beautiful pieces of furniture need feature lighting and so on. Having some contrasts with lighting will make your home seem larger and more interesting and using separate switching for different lighting types will enable you to change the feel of your home depending on whether you are entertaining, watching TV, working or even cleaning!          

 

Colour is king

Warm blue and cream makes a lovely space of this boot room

 

Colour is an interior designer’s best friend. A coat of paint can add character and personalise a space, create light and dark contrasts, highlight features and create a warm or cool, calm or stimulating, comforting or inspiring impression depending on what you want to achieve. Although the paint on our walls makes up a large part of the colour palette of a room, the flooring, fabrics, furnishings and accessories of a room all play their part in creating a look so consider your colour choices as a whole before selecting your paint or wallpaper colours.        

 

 

Think differently

We are bombarded in the media by images of what the modern home should look like, and we can sometimes lose our own imagination. If you go back to basics and think about how you want to use your home and what you want it to look like, you will start to create a picture of how your home can work for you. Only then will you start to select images, products and ideas from outside sources that will work for you. By using this approach you will be able to create a unique home that truly reflects your personality.

 

A collection of sporting trophies creates a lovely personal feel

 Let us know what you think?

Did you see the article, or do you have some design tips of your own? We’d love to hear from you!

 

 

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‘Secrets of a Stylish Home’

It is a year since our book ‘Secrets of a Stylish Home’ was published and we are delighted that the sales of the books have been better than we ever expected. It was incredibly exciting to see our work and words in print, not least because the team at Merrell Publishers did such a great job with their beautiful design and layout. There is a germ of an idea forming for another book which we hope to start work on early next year but until then, thank you to all who have purchased the book and have let us know that you like it. To the rest of you, it is still available to buy!

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We’re in Cambridge Magazine!

The delightful Alice Ryan from Cambridge Magazine paid a visit recently for what seemed to me to be a chat and a cup of tea, so I was highly impressed when she said she had enough information for the article she was planning about my home above the Angel and Blume office. The magazine is now out and I have to say that she has got the measure of me – albeit the better side of me – so thank you Alice, it was lovely to meet you!

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Secrets of a Stylish Home

Secrets of a Stylish Home is a book that I have been working on for the last year with the brilliant interiors photographer Simon Whitmore, and all the lovely and talented people at Merrell Publishing. The book is a look behind the scenes at our approach to interior design and photography is all taken in the beautiful homes of friends and clients of Angel and Blume. It is due for release in April this year and I am really delighted with the results.

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